The more frequently you monitor your portfolio, the more likely you are to observe a loss.
This is likely to cause short-sighted decisions and could hurt your investment performance.
If you are checking your portfolio more than once per quarter, you’re doing it too much.
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Back in February, in his annual letter to investors, Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffett spent a good bit of time discussing why one shouldn’t own gold. Beyond the fact that, according to WB, gold doesn’t “change in size and [is] incapable of producing anything,” and you’d be much better off buying farmland (which “a century from now will have produced staggering amounts of corn, wheat, cotton and other crops and will continue to produce that valuable bounty”) or shares of Exxon Mobil (which “will probably have delivered trillions of dollars in dividends to its owners,” the Oracle of Omaha had one incontrovertible, be all end all reason for eschewing the metal: its unfuckability. Oh sure, you can do things to a cube, you can fondle it, you can talk dirty to it, you can send nude pictures of yourself, you can even drill a hole in it and fuck it senseless, but, the thing is, the cube will not respond. No reciprocation, no gratitude, not even a sign it enjoyed itself. For Buffett, no further argument was necessary as to the worthlessness of the commodity. (Silver, on the other hand, will make you feel like you’re 18 again.) Anyway, David Einhorn sort of feels the same way about the dollar.

If you’ve done the analysis, and come to the conclusion that on it’s own, the company is not going to make it, it makes all of the sense in the world to raise equity at whatever the price is, so that you can know that the company, you know, is – is going to make it. Now, what that brings to my mind though is, you know, obviously we haven’t done your analysis, we haven’t done — signed an NDA; I don’t know that we’re going to sign an NDA, because we prefer to just remain investors, but from my perspective, and I’ll be just straight up with you, is that gives a lot of signalling value. And the signalling value that comes from figuring out the company has figured out that it’s not going to make it on it’s own is that we’ve just grossly misassessed the — you know what’s going on here. And — and that, that will cause us to have to just reconsider what we’re doing, which is not the end of the world to you. You will continue on even if we don’t continue on with you.

You could sort of see why the FSA read that to mean that he was insider trading. Like …
(1) You have told me something with signalling value. Sorry – “a lot of signalling value.”
(2) I will now act on that signal.
(3) Don’t be mad.
“Signalling value” sure sounds like it means “material nonpublic information,” doesn’t it?

Now as we’ve discussed before, trading on that information would not be enough to make Einhorn guilty of insider trading in the US, though maybe it wouldn’t be exactly a great idea here either. Why? Because in our weird but sort of sensible insider trading laws, it’s just not illegal to trade on material nonpublic information. It’s only illegal to trade based on material nonpublic information that was obtained in violation of some sort of duty of confidence. Since Einhorn didn’t sign an NDA, he had no duty of confidence. And since the Punch CEO and bankers weren’t tipping him for nefarious purposes, but were instead sounding him out on the company’s behalf as a shareholder and potential investor in a new capital raise, they weren’t breaching their duty of confidence. You could quibble with the details of that but it’s basically the law here. In England not so much.

Remember how David Einhorn got in trouble in England for insider trading on Punch Taverns stock and he was all “what?” and we were all “what?“? Well, you can judge it for yourself because now the entire disputed call with Punch is available online (at the back of this). So go read it, or read the highlights here. The FSA still thinks it’s insider trading, but the count of people confused by the whole thing is rising, and now includes the Merrill banker on the call. There’s lots of insider traderiness on this side of the pond today too so we should talk about that in a bit.

For now, though, two other things. One is quick – no one can resist one part of the call and I can’t either so here it is:

DAVID EINHORN: Hi, I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you when you were in New York.
PUNCH CEO: No, no, we — well, we’ve — we’ve only had the chance to speak once, although we have seen [reference to Greenlight Analyst] a few times since then.
DAVID EINHORN: Oh, you’re — you’re — you’re getting more than — than I could help with anyway. So, this is good.
PUNCH CEO: Okay. That’s fair enough. Well, one day we’ll get you around on a pub crawl around some English pubs.
DAVID EINHORN: Oh, that sounds fun.
PUNCH CEO: It is. You’re right.

English readers: Is it? I just assumed that Punch Taverns are rather grim places, like TGI Friday’s but with more … punching? … but maybe I’m totally off base here. Also, here is a hypothesis: vice investments do well because, for the same level of profitability, they get more analyst/investor coverage and enthusiasm. Wouldn’t you rather go on a pub crawl instead of like a tour of an auto parts factory in Queens? Would that influence your stock recommendations / money allocations? Someone should do a study.

The more frequently you monitor your portfolio, the more likely you are to observe a loss. This is likely to cause short-sighted decisions and could hurt your investment performance. If you are checking your portfolio more than once per quarter, you’re doing it too much.